Backstage with: Reyna de Courcy

During her busy eight performances a week schedule, we nabbed a few minutes with Luna Gale's Reyna de Courcy (Karlie) and quick-fired five "backstage with" questions at her. She was gracious enough to respond—see her answers below!

Colin Sphar and Reyna de Courcy in Luna Gale

Goodman Theatre: Place of birth and/or hometown?

Reyna de Courcy: I was born in and grew up in Ashland, Oregon. Ashland is the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, so theater has always been all up in my face. OSF has an amazing Elizabethan theater which now has a great big acoustic shell around it, but before the shell was built, one could actually peek over a fence from the park, and see all the way down to the stage. I think my earliest memory of theater, from when I was a very little kid, is of doing just that from my dad’s shoulders during a performance one summer night.

GT: First professional role/production you were in?

RdC: I can’t decide how to answer this question because I can’t decide what counts as professional. When I was a middle school drama nerd I felt like a professional, and now that I am technically a professional, I feel more like a middle school drama nerd.

GT: Favorite professional role/production you were in?

RdC: Luna Gale is certainly among my very favorites, and I’ve been lucky to work on a lot of really amazing projects. There are so many I’d love to name, but most recently, I’m very proud to have been a part of the Playwrights Horizons' production of The Whale by Samuel Hunter.

GT: Dream role or production you hope to be in in the future?

RdC: Attention casting directors of the world: please put me in some science fiction! I feel like science fiction is where I come from—it’s the mythology I grew up on, and there’s no doubt that it’s shaped how I see the world. I believe that great science fiction (and all speculative fiction) challenges both the storyteller and the audience to continually push at the edges of the imagination, and to imagine past the perceived boundaries of reality, like a puzzle that continually evolves to ever evade the puzzler.

GT: Role you know you’ll never get to play because of your age/sex/race but would love to play in an alternate universe, and why?

RdC: As an actor I really wish I was an older man with one of those dark buzzy voices. I’d like to play Ahab, or Nemo, or Magneto—or basically anything you’d hire Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen for. I’m fascinated with those thundering characters, driven by obsession right up to the edge of madness.

GT: Production or role you've experienced as an audience member that left you speechless?

RdC: Well, speaking of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, I got to see Waiting For Godot with those two plus Shuler Hensley and Billy Crudup in New York just before coming here. What a joy that show is! It breaks your heart and makes you giggle, and feels effortless from start to finish.

Colin Sphar and Reyna de Courcy in Luna Gale

See Reyna de Courcy in Luna Gale before it closes February 23! Buy tickets now.